Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed a new large-scale energy storage battery design featuring a commonplace chemical used in water treatment facilities. The new recipe provides a pathway to creating safe, economical, and water-based iron-based flow batteries made with naturally sourced materials.
While iron-based flow batteries have been around for decades, this iteration has the ability to store energy in a unique chemical formula comprised of charged iron and a neutral-pH phosphate-based liquid electrolyte, otherwise known as an energy carrier.
The chemical, called nitrogenous triphosphonate, nitrilotri-methylphosphonic acid, or NTMPA, is available in industrial size quantities, since it is typically used to inhibit corrosion in water treatment plants.
According to the researchers, their lab-scale, iron-based battery displayed exceptional cycling stability over 1,000 consecutive charging cycles while maintaining 98.7% of its maximum capacity; previous studies of similar batteries reported degradation over fewer charging cycles.
“We were looking for an electrolyte that could bind and store charged iron in a liquid complex at room temperature and mild operating conditions with neutral pH,” said senior author Guosheng Li, a senior scientist at PNNL. “We are motivated to develop battery materials that are Earth-abundant and can be sourced domestically.”
Researchers at PNNL intend to scale this new battery technology at the Grid Storage Launchpad (GSL), a new facility opening at PNNL in 2024. The facility will help accelerate the development of additional flow battery technologies.
You can read the rest of this story here.
Learn more: Are Iron Flow, Sodium-Ion, and Solid State Batteries the Future of Energy Storage?